Good morning readers, This week ahead will be a bit lite due to travel and research. I will add to this post this evening.
Let’s get started.
Bitcoin. We all thought that investing in bitcoin is how we invest in the blockchain technology. It has become even easier for anyone to build their own blockchain, so which one is the right one? The anser may surprise you. It depends. Bitcoin, is the one everyone knows. Ethereum is a competing crypto-currecncy that people are paying attention to. LiteCoin is a third one that Coinbase has integrated into its platform. Thes will continue, but the uses of the blockchain as a journal of sorts is beginning to explode. How do I know, Amazon web services, Azure, Google Cloud, and even IBM all have a way for you to build your own blockchain. This ease tells me that the technology is more important than the actual coin.
This past week, Bitcoin had a big drop of over 650.00 per coin, at the time of this writing, it has recovered a bit.
What to Watch for this week
- Investors will be watchin President Mario Draghi’s press conference for clues on how the ECB could scale back its quantitative easing program.
- China is scheduled to release data on second-quarter gross domestic product at around 10:00 AM EST on Monday.
- Futures traders are pricing in around a 40% chance of a rate hike by the end of the year, according to Investing.com’s Fed Rate Monitor Tool.
- Headlines from Washington regarding President Donald Trump’s healthcare plan will also be in focus.
Economic News
Wednesday July 19th, 2017
8:30 AM EST, the U.S. Commerce Departmentwill release the number of new residential constructions projects that began last month. With both April at 1.206 M starts and May at 1.092 M starts were weak, we anticipate a stronger number in June.
10:30 AM EST, the EIA.gov will release the weekly oil and distillates report. Last week oil inventories decrease -7.6 M barrels of Oil and increase of 3.1 M barrels of distillates. The oil inventory is finally seeing some sort of drawdown, Gasoline decresed -1.6 M barrels. August WTI closed at 45.66 with a low of 45.16 on Thursday.
Thursday July 20, 2017
8:30 AM EST, the US Department of Labor will announce the weekly New Jobless Claims. Last week new claims came in at 248K and the 4-week moving average came in at 243K Claims have been low, indicating a strong labor market. Forecasters see initial claims coming in around 245,000 vs, 248,000 of last week.
8:30 AM EST, the Philadelphia Fed Business Outlook Survey will be released. Growth in the factory sector is uneven. The prior reading was 27.6 and consensus is 22.0.
Earnings Report
Last weeks numbers
